It's Alive—and on Blu-ray!

The bond between Universal and horror movies is unrivaled. No Hollywood studio ever had stronger ties to one genre. Nor was that association confined to a particular time—as was true with Warner Bros.' connection to gangster pictures or MGM's to musicals. Universal is still making horror films rooted in characters and situations established in the early 1930s, when a number of seminal films—"Dracula," "Frankenstein," "The Mummy"—spawned durable franchises and later inspired modern remakes.

Now celebrating the centenary of its founding, the studio is acknowledging this relationship in a home-video collection titled "Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection," which brings eight movies to Blu-ray for the first time. The selection of films parallels exactly a set from 12 years ago titled "Universal Studios Classic Monster Collection," but the transfers are all new. And they are stunning.

Working in some cases from fragile archival sources, restorers have breathed new life into these tales of the undead, eliminating scratches, debris, crackle, hiss and other imperfections without sacrificing the films' distinctive antique aspects. Light and shadow, storm clouds and fog, candlelight and even bright sunshine are all rendered vividly yet naturally.

The earliest picture included is "Dracula" (1931), starring Bela Lugosi in a sui generis performance based on his appearance in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. But the film itself, directed by Tod Browning, is creaky and slow, despite the occasionally gripping mise-en-scène. A sharp contrast comes from the Spanish-language version of the movie, a welcome extra here. Shot at night on the same sets Browning and company used during the day, but with a different cast and director, this Latin take is livelier—to say nothing of sexier—and watching Carlos Villarías as Conde Drácula proves there's more than one way to play a vampire.

Just as Browning's "Dracula" was not the first film inspired by Stoker's work, so James Whale's "Frankenstein" (1931) was not the first screen telling of Mary Shelley's cautionary novel. (It was preceded by several silent versions dating as far back as 1910.) Yet Boris Karloff's portrayal of Frankenstein's monster proved even more defining than Lugosi's Dracula did. And Whale's film, with its arresting visual debt to German Expressionism, is considerably more energetic than Browning's. Incredibly, the director surpassed himself with the film's first sequel, the appealingly terse "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), which further humanizes the creature (Karloff again) and introduces his would-be mate (a wry Elsa Lanchester).

Karloff, who came to detest the typecasting resulting from these successes, also stars as the title character in "The Mummy" (1932), in which he plays an ancient Egyptian prince reincarnated. The picture—directed by the cinematographer Karl Freund, who shot "Dracula"—is richly atmospheric but mostly remarkable for the ghoulish makeup created for Karloff by Jack Pierce, who was also responsible for developing the unforgettable look of Frankenstein's monster and his bride. (Years later, in a television interview, Karloff called the often uncredited Pierce "the best makeup man in the world.")

Pierce was involved as well in Whale's version of H.G. Wells's "The Invisible Man" (1933), with Claude Rains (in his sound-film debut) as a megalomaniacal scientist who discovers a serum for invisibility. But the movie belongs to John P. Fulton, whose artful special effects remain the picture's principal draw.

This collection does not include Universal's first werewolf film, the little-loved "Werewolf of London" (1935), probably because it spawned no sequels. But "The Wolf Man" (1941) did, with Lon Chaney Jr. beneath Pierce's extensive makeup. In addition to reprising his Larry Talbot/Wolf Man character, Chaney portrayed variations on Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy and Dracula through the decade.

The last two films in this set approach the genre with a different sensibility, and their inclusion feels forced. "Phantom of the Opera" (1943) is presumably inserted to atone for the absence of the picture that engendered Universal's commitment to horror: "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925), the still-chilling silent starring Lon Chaney. The version here, in Technicolor, mixes broad comedy with elaborate musical numbers (Nelson Eddy and Susanna Foster star) but prompts very few shivers. And the phantom of the title—a third-billed Rains—is woefully miscast. "Creature From the Black Lagoon" (1954) is really an exercise in camp. Its frights are tongue-in-cheek; the acting, mannered. But the underwater photography remains impressive, and the option for 3-D viewing (only for those with compatible televisions) is certainly welcome.

Varied bonus features enhance the set, most especially Kevin Brownlow's documentary "Universal Horror." Nearly all are available elsewhere, though not in one place. One big drawback is the handsome package's construction. The tight cardboard sleeves virtually guarantee scratched discs. Also, the price varies widely. In Britain an all-region version sells for about a third the cost of the U.S. box. Still, fans of these films will want to see them in their latest incarnation one way or another. And why not? Their impact continues to haunt us.

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